Friday: Schoolhouse! 3:45pm in Room 362D! Showing some of the quilts from Quilt Talk and teaching retailers how to market the book. And I have great giveaway swag. And Sew Sassy Buttons. And SHORTBREAD. You want to be there!

The rest of the time: I’ll be on a scooter, protecting my goofy heart, with fingers crossed to stay the heck out of the hospital this time. For those of you who worry about me when I travel, please know that the Queens of BadAssery, Maddie and Flaun, are my guardian angels this trip, and are not afraid to kick my patootie and send me to my room if I get over-tired.

BUTTONS! I have new Sassy buttons to share – track me down and ask to dig through the swag bag. Really, just ask – I love to share them. If you are a Quilt Industry Professional, I have a special button for you, because you are now officially Quilt Famous!*

*The Fractured Fairy Tale behind Quilt Famous goes like this: Once upon a time, the daughters of a certain Quilt Humor Writer came to their mother with questions, as children are wont to do. Being as whip smart and sassy as their mama, the young ladies demanded to know, now that said mama had written a whole book, just EXACTLY how famous she was. It was determined that, by tabloid standards, their mother wasn’t very famous at all. But it was pointed out that, in the small realm of Quiltdom, their mother actually has cred, and oodles of fans who adore her, both qualifying attributes for the achievement of fame. Thus the term Quilt Famous was coined, and all of Quiltdom may live on, happily ever after, secure in their quilt fame, too.

In other news… the qiveaway for Quilt Talk and a bunch of other goodies is still open for comments until Monday, after I return.

AND lastly… I’ll be playing Cards Against Humanity (CAH) with my fellow quilters on Saturday night. I have blank cards that need some diabolical quilt related stuff written on them. Ideas? Leave them in the comments, or email them to me at sewsamsew (AT) gmail (DOT) com if you want to preserve your “butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth” rep. Your secrets are safe with me! I will send Sassy Buttons to the author of a randomly chosen phrase or question offered!!

Catch you later!

BTW – Did you join my mailing list yet? Do it here. I’m dreaming up groovy exclusive stuff for you!

It was pointed out to me that the ORANGE bucket seems to have a bit more work in the fabrics – to which I can only say “guilty as charged!” ORANGE is definitely my favorite color, and I had strips left over from making another project, so it was perfect.

Thank you for hopping along, and I hope you’re inspired to make a project talk with some words! If you didn’t yet purchase your copy of Quilt Talk, you can get a signed copy here. You can also hit up your local quilt shop or indie bookstore – remember, the price difference between the local store and Amazon is only about the cost of a frothy coffee or a half yard of fabric – so please give your local stores some love or they won’t be there when you need them!

And finally – I have goodies for you! In addition to an autographed book, I have a package of my favorite newsprint paper-piecing paper, a hunk of Timtex and fusible fleece to get you started on a bucket, printouts of all the color words on the newsprint, and some Sassy Buttons. And if there’s room in the envelope, maybe other things!

In your comments, please talk quilty to me! Tell me which words you’d use on your wordy quilt. Random.org will help me choose a winner on Monday Oct 27, after I get back from Houston Quilt Market (where I plan to take a lot of pix, so follow @huntersds on Instagram, or here on Facebook.

ALSO – when I get back from Quilt Market, look for a photo tutorial on how to make the buckets!

A LAST REMINDER: Hop back to these great people to grab any missing color patterns!

You might not know that I spent my formative years hopping back and forth between England and the US, and because of that, I have some blind spots in my ability to spell. The word GRAY/GREY is one of those spots. I had to research this one before making the pattern… it turns out that A belongs to the US and E belongs to everywhere else. I put both in the pattern so that wherever you are, you’ll be OK!

And now, to Maddie. I adore this woman. She is all-out inspiration, living life large, but the best part about that is she encourages those of us around her to do the same. She started BAQS when one person too many told her to be a bit more seemly, and to make her quilts fit their definition of proper. Not only did Maddie rebel, she made a place for all of us to go be ourselves. Acceptance is the first tenet of BAQS, and being totally, beautifully, uniquely YOU is the next, and “be nice” is the third – no flame wars allowed! AND she dived into making a quilt for the book with wild abandon! (See the pix on her hop)

Beyond that, she is the champion of MANY in the quilt arena. She is a wise business woman who uses her powers for good, the embodiment of one of my favorite quotes from Madeleine Albright:

She helps those of us around her, coaching us all to shine a bit brighter. She promotes and links and shares and praises the things she believes in with generous abandon, and I’m a very, very grateful recipient of her TLC.

She’s also a dear, dear pal. I ended up in the hospital during last quilt market, and she and Megan Dougherty scrambled their schedules to make sure I had a friend with me pretty much until I got discharged. Lucky me, I get to take another picture like this one next week in Houston! (while avoiding the hospital like the plague!)

Please hop over to Maddie, and if you haven’t joined BAQS yet, please do so… it’s one place you can go to just make the quilts you love to make.

The last minute prep for Spring Quilt Market is under way… the suitcases are out, the new pattern samples are with the distributors (I’ll give you a peek next week), and I have one load of laundry left to go.

One of the things I always take to market are Sassy Buttons… usually a bag of the latest and favorites, along with a bag of brand new ones, hot off the presses, to share and test. But it hardly seems fair to exclude you, dear readers, from the newest sass! So here they are:

If you’re interested in winning a set, leave a comment telling me which one you would give to a specific friend and why – I’ll draw after I get back from Market next week. YES, if you’re outside of the USA, you can play too

As for Market – keep an eye on Facebook and Instagram ( @ huntersds ) – I’ll be posting pix there for you too. If there’s something specific you want me to look for, please mention it on FB and I’ll do what I can to track down a picture for you.

BTW – Did you join my mailing list yet? Do it here. I’m dreaming up groovy exclusive stuff for you!

I really hope you read that title with the rhythm of the Spam song in your head!

Today is my stop on the blog hop for Quilt Dots. If you haven’t seen these great little quilt lover’s accessories, you’re in for a treat! The Dots are quilting designs on magnets, clips and buttons. There are also necklace and keychain bases that you can swap the magnets out on. There are so many styles of designs available… truly something for everyone!

I met Kim, the owner of Quilt Dots last year at Quilt Market, and she had just added a collection from my dear pal Megan, The Bitchy Stitcher, that featured her delightfully snarky designs. That’s me wearing Bitchy’s “Don’t Make Me Cut You” as a necklace, below.

Kim added my Sassy Button designs to her catalog, and you can find them here.

Quilt Dots has a great giveaways EVERY DAY of the blog tour, so jump to here to see what you could win. Psst… I have free patterns over there!

Be sure to leave your comments THERE (not here… which is why the comments are turned off here). The Grand Prize is a full year’s worth of Quilt Dot goodness delivered straight to your door!

I’ve recently had a lot of requests for deals on buttons to give out at volunteer sew-a-thons for the various Quilts of Valor and Quilts of Honor type organizations – the people that make sure that active service-people, veterans, and their families are blankets with good quilt love. This world is a better place for such volunteer quilting!

While I appreciate being asked to contribute to these organizations (and am thrilled that they like the Sassy Buttons!) I’ve hit a point where I can’t cover the freebies any more – this girl has to make a living! So rather than greet these requests with a big fat no-thank-you, I decided to design a button just for the volunteers.

I’ve made arrangements with my wonderful USA-based button folks to be able to drop ship these to you at the best bargain they and I can manage: You order them from me here in increments of 50, and I arrange for them to come to you for the best price we can pull out of the hat, with shipping included.

Please pass along to anyone you know who sews for the heroes – cheers!

Like many of you, I plan to stay away from the stores this weekend. I have no interest in being part of any insanity that might happen on Friday, and I refuse to shop on Thursday – I’m voting with my feet by not giving businesses my money that day… perhaps if we all do this some people, like J-Girl (my son’s lovely lady) might get to have a saner holiday. She’s scheduled for 11pm Thursday to 11am Friday – and I find this just SO wrong. Call me old fashioned, but I’m all for shutting down commerce on holidays (and even Sundays) because I just can’t believe that people spending good time with other people could possibly be a bad thing. We already move too fast and communicate too electronically – let’s have a few more real time hugs!

So to that note… I urge you to consider the handmade for some of your holiday shopping options – the folks at Fiber Nation made a lovely argument in support of this. Etsy and other venues abound with wonderfully unique things, and all these artisans deserve some recognition for the often underpaid toil that they do.

I also have a few things to offer – as always, there are patterns and Sassy Buttons, but I also have some new partnerships in play: the Quilt Dots people are carrying all the Sassy and Knit buttons as magnets, and they sell jewelry bases for turning the magnets into necklaces and such. That pic above is of me from quilt market, modeling one of the Dots from The Bitchy Stitcher’s collection… and don’t worry, they have other great Dots with more traditional designs if that’s what you’re looking for. We embrace and celebrate the differences around here!

Also Cafe Press will print any Sassy Button saying on any of their merch, from t-shirts to coffee mugs to tote bags – to quote them, 35 designs on 2680 products!

Lastly… as you may have read, I’m about to pack up and move to the Pacific NorthWest. As I’ve been going through my stuff, I have discovered a few quilts that are ready to find new homes and I’ll be posting those for sale later today or tomorrow. There will be some sweet deals as I’m motivated to NOT pack them! Watch this space!

While the first set are being distributed far and wide by great folks that supply quilt stores, these lovelies will remain exclusively here for a while. And the ORANGE version of The Ultimate Power Tool is a limited edition thing… once it’s gone, it’s gone.